Cabrera's son Roanin, 5, is comforted by his grandfather, Michael Wegener, right, while Gillian, 12, Maxwell, 7, and Corbin, 13, are consoled by other family members after their father's funeral Friday at Spring Baptist Church.

Photo By Johnny Hanson

August Cabrera, the wife of Lt. Col. David Cabrera, gets a hug from Lynda Kagan, left, with the Patriot Guard Riders, before the funeral for Lt. Col. Cabrera.

Photo By Johnny Hanson

Holding an American flag and the image of his son in the background, Robert Cabrera leans on his granddaughter Addison Day, 2, after the funeral.

Photo By Johnny Hanson

Texas A&M Corps of Cadets salute in front of a picture of Cabrera during the funeral.

More Information

August Cabrera's last letter from her husband arrived four days after she learned he had been killed in Afghanistan.

Army Lt. Col. David Cabrera, 41, wrote the letter for the couple's ninth wedding anniversary on Oct. 19, and had mailed it from Afghanistan weeks before.

"I figured it had been lost because it had been so long," said August, 38. "It sort of felt like a gift from God, you know, like, 'Here's the last thing that Dave ever said to you.' It was very sweet, very sweet, just filled with love."

On Friday, Veterans Day, August honored him at a funeral service at Spring Baptist Church.

The Sam Houston High School graduate died when a suicide bomber rammed a NATO convoy in Kabul on Oct. 29. He leaves behind four children: son Corbin, 13, and daughter Gillian, 12, from a previous relationship; and Max, 7, and Roanin, 5, his sons with August.

"My 7-year-old said, 'He never said tomorrow,' and that's true," August said. "It was never tomorrow. You want to ride a bike? Let's do it today. You want to climb a mountain? Let's do it today. You want to see the world? Let's do it today. He never postponed anything. He lived in the moment. It's almost like he knew he wasn't going to have all the time in the world."

'Who is this man?'

The couple met at a party thrown by mutual friends in Fort Lewis, Wash., where David was stationed.

"He walked into the room in a Venetian carnival mask and a cape, and I was like, 'Wow, who is this man?'" August recalled. "And about 10 minutes after I met him I knew this was the man I was going to marry."

Feeling bold, she sent him a letter afterward that he carried with him for years. "I just said I could see our life together," August said. "It just made sense to me. I could see us traveling the world together, raising kids together."

They married in Virginia in 2002, but would throw three more weddings to renew their vows "because we had so much fun the first time," August said.

The couple liked to joke that they would get married again every time they moved somewhere new. Their second wedding was in Maryland, the third in Washington state before David deployed to Iraq, and the fourth in Germany.

"We were driving back from Italy and he said, 'My surprise for you for your birthday is we're going to get married again on Saturday in the chapel at the Heidelberg castle,' " August said.

"He was very romantic and full of life," she said. "He did everything 100 percent or more. And he loved his kids with his whole heart. He loved me with his whole heart, and he loved serving people. He had a servant's heart."

That heart led David to his professional calling. As a licensed clinical social worker with the Army, he helped soldiers struggling with post-traumatic stress and personal problems. He volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan because he knew there was a shortage of behavioral health specialists like himself on the front lines, his wife said.

"He said, 'If you need me, I'll go,' and so he went," August said. "He wasn't told to go, he wasn't ordered to go, he volunteered to go because he knew there was such a need for it. He wanted to help these young soldiers."

Promise to come home

At first his decision was hard for August to accept, she said, "but I understood that he needed to do it, so as his wife I supported him and his decision to go, even though I desperately didn't want him to go."

August last spoke to him by phone on a Friday afternoon, the day before he died.

"He called me, and we just chatted about 20 minutes," she said. "It was just a normal conversation. I kept telling him to be safe. I made him promise me that he was going to come home. It was the only promise to me he didn't keep."

In the middle of the night on October 28, August woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. The next day, she saw the news that a convoy in Kabul had been hit by a suicide bomber, killing 17 people, and somehow she just knew.

"I know that sounds crazy, but I think we were just that connected," she said. "Something was wrong, and it woke me up."

She spent the rest of the weekend waiting for the Army notification team to come to her door in Maryland.

'This is real'

Her little boys have had a hard time processing the news, August said. Five-year-old Roanin keeps telling everyone his Daddy is dead. Max, 7, has withdrawn into himself, quiet and thoughtful.

"Yesterday he woke up and he told me, 'Mama, I'm the oldest man in the house now,'" August said.

She asked that people remember troops and their families not just on Veterans Day, but every day.

"We can't become complacent in our lives," she said. "We have it really easy in America, for the most part. We get really apathetic about what's happening in the world, and we need to remind people that this war isn't a TV show, this isn't a video game, this is real. This should be front page news every day that this is happening, that people are dying, and lives are being ripped apart."